Clay Farris Naff (claynaff.com) is a science writer with a special interest in the rational reconciliation of religions with science. An award-winning journalist and author, he has been a Tokyo correspondent for United Press International, a freelance reporter for National Public Radio, a science-and-religion columnist for the Metanexus Institute, and is the author or editor of numerous books, including most recently Free God Now! He has been a freelance writer for Newsweek, Earth Magazine, The Humanist, and Scientific American, among other publications. You can follow him at Twitter @claynaff, or join his Free God Now! page on Google+.or Facebook. Any opinions expressed are his alone.

Entries by Clay Farris Naff

Sounds like front end of a bad joke, right? But that's the full list of religious officials deemed competent to perform marriages under HB1125, the bill that Oklahoma's House just passed in an attempt to restore ecclesiastical...

Amid the ashes of World War II, with the stench of industrial-scale genocide in their nostrils, the nations of the world pledged to do better. They signed onto the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For the rest of the 20th century, human rights blossomed.

Long before there were Nazis, this was the prevailing sentiment in America's heartland. During World War I, patriotic Nebraskans formed "The Council of Defense" and went about intimidating anyone who spoke or published German. Propaganda, like the image below, stoked their righteous rage.

I hope this letter will please you. For one thing, this is the first open letter addressed to you in, gosh, nearly a month. What's more, I won't ask you for money, investment advice, or a tax-deductible contribution. I simply hope to point out...

In Russia, Putin is out to restore, of all things, the Soviet empire. In China, Hong Kong's promise of freedom endures slow strangulation. In Europe, neo-fascist parties are scaling the heights of power. The Middle East, never at peace, has...

Eight men attended what may have been a gay union on a boat on the Nile. We know this because in September a video of the event went public. The men were not seen to have engaged in any sexual acts; the most "damning" thing in the video is that...

A Flying Spaghetti Monster, that is? Last month in these pages I published a call for government to treat the followers of His Noodliness just as they would believers in any other religion. This month, Pastafarians put the Feds to the test.

For all those who care more about fairness than doctrine, this is a moment to be savored. It is like the day in 1990 when Nelson Mandela was released from his South African jail: You just knew that apartheid's days were done.

Last September, when I attended Apostacon, an Omaha-based freethought conference celebrating the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the mood was all ribaldry, mockery and piracy. (Pirates, of the "arrrr, matey" variety, are considered misunderstood divine beings.)

On its face, this is a preposterous statement. By definition fiction is false. The tourists who for decades sought out 221B Baker Street in hopes of glimpsing Sherlock Holmes were barking up an imaginary tree after fictional prey: neither the address nor the sleuth existed. Since...

The sight of Michael Sam's eyes welling with tears will stay with me forever. Unfortunately, for the fanatics of Old Time Religion it's the sight of Sam kissing his boyfriend after becoming the first openly gay man drafted into the NFL that will remain indelible.

Comparison with Nazis is so overdone that there's even a name for it: Godwin's Law. Still, the parallels with Putin's Russia right now are so very tempting: after the collapse of its empire a fumbling, nascent democracy creates an opening for a ruthless strongman who stokes the nation's wounded pride...

Widely regarded as America's leading Christian philosopher, Alvin Plantinga, emeritus professor of philosophy at Notre Dame, offers what are presumably his best arguments against atheism and in favor of Christian belief in a lengthy New York Times "Opinionator" interview published earlier this week. Its headline: "Is Atheism Irrational?"

Rev. Thomas Ogletree performed a marriage ceremony for his own son. For that, he will stand trial in March before an ecclesiastical court of the United Methodist Church. You see, his son is gay. Ogletree officiated...

Indiana already has a law banning gay marriage, complete with criminal penalties for pastors who perform same-sex rites, but that's not good enough for state Republicans. Prodded by right-wing religious groups such as the good Christian folks at the Indiana Family Institute, GOP legislators voted overwhelmingly...